Dispensing apparatus such as metered dose inhalers are well known in the art for use in dispensing products such as pharmaceutical formulations for the treatment of respiratory conditions including asthma. A metered dose inhaler typically comprises an actuator housing in which is received a pressurised dispensing container which itself comprises a dispensing canister and a metering valve which are assembled together by means of a ferrule. The pressurised dispensing container contains a product to be dispensed and a propellant which is volatile at atmospheric conditions. An example of a metered dose inhaler of this type is described in the applicant's European patent application EP1088567. It is desirable to provide such a dispensing apparatus with a dose counter to provide an indication to a user of how many doses of product either remain in the pressurised dispensing container or have been dispensed from the pressurised dispensing container. In the past, a number of mechanical dose counters for such apparatus have been proposed. Examples are described in the applicant's patent applications GB2348928 and GB2438396. For mechanical dose counters for use with metered dose inhalers it is typical to use the linear movement of the pressurised dispensing container within the actuator housing for triggering or activating the mechanical dose counter mechanism. The metering valve of the pressurised dispensing container comprises a valve stem which protrudes and engages with a valve stem receiving block of the actuator housing. For a typical metering valve which is used in such applications the degree to which the valve stem travels in use relative to the remainder of the metering valve is relatively small and in the order of 3.5 mm. In addition, the travel of the valve stem before actuation of the valve is typically only in the order of 1.5 to 2.0 mm. This has been found to lead to problems in designing efficient and reliable mechanical dose counter mechanisms in that the relatively small physical travel of the valve stem, and hence the remainder of the pressurised dispensing container on actuation provides only limited physical movement of the pressurised dispensing container for triggering a mechanical dose counter mechanism.